tired, angry and in need of a quick fix...

[entropygirl]

Hi all,

I know I promised to read the books recommended here but I have a full time job and PND and its not looking like its going to happen soon....

So please could people confirm or deny the idea I have in my head that male and female babies brains are identical until we start to force our prejudices on them? (If the answer is that it's complicated then I can take that! I'm a scientist :))

I am getting madder every day that S'buries split baby grows by sex. I mean the only baby product I can imagine it would be worth differentiating male and female for would be nappies and as far as I know they don't. SO QUIT IT!

On the plus side I emailed the people advertising the Boys Future Star T-Shirt
on
www.mumsnet.com/christmas/top-childrens-christmas-presents-2011

and asked them why exactly it was only suitable for boys and they have apologised and renamed it 'kids' on their website.

Small steps...small steps....

hmmm had a reply from ASA about children and gender stereotype enforcing adverts...it would seem that they are not interested in forcing the issue but anything that causes offence to a large enough number of people can be pulled....

so we are in a catch 22. Stereotypes are currently acceptable so the ASA wont do anything to stop adverts with them in....but until people stop seeing it everywhere it wont become unacceptable...

Although we could all gang up together and try and get something pulled?

There's a link elsewhere on here to an article about the disproportionate amount of men vs women in the public eye, which is sobering reading. What stuck out at me was a comment by a TV producer that the reason there are more men than women in panel discussions is that women usually turn him down when he invites them, as they don't feel they'd have anything worthwhile to say. He puts this down to women not wanting to be on panel shows, but misses the glaringly obvious point is that women are taught to be quiet, deferential, self-deprecating and not express their opinions from a very early age, for fear of being 'unfeminine'. It all starts very early and is all bollocks!

Can anyone give me a brief synopsis of Baron Cohen's Pink brain Blue Brain, and why it's wrong?
yes I know I could buy it, read it and form my own opinions but I don't have time, I am meeting someone at the week end who I predict will be picking a fight with me, so I'd love to have my rebuttals ready.

I do appear to be more muddled than I thought - thanks TBE

Butterfly that made interesting reading....

So to use what I am sure is a tired out analogy of computers then what science knows is that the hard drive/cpu in men is on average physically larger (although we dont know that that corresponding to processing speed storage density at all, that there are some differences in the way the motherboard is connected up but we dont know what difference that makes to the output.

What is also obvious is that we load a completely different operating system onto a male computer than a female (think gritty nuts and bolts Linux for guys and superficially pretty Windows for women) via gender specific conditioning.

So which of these do you most expect to effect the performance of the computer? A few, mostly physical, details of component layouts or the operating system?

thanks tbe.

I am meeting a friend with a knobbish argumentative partner at the weekend - you know the type. Need to have my facts at my fingertips in case he starts up. In fact maybe I'll be the arsey one deliberately needling him, for a change

The fact is that girls are more intelligent than boys. Boys use their energy to grow big, girls use theirs to be more intelligent. That is why they do better in school.

Its easy to make up a plausible sounding story to justify unfair discrimination.

No that's not a fact at all, chickn.
Intelligence is spread throughout the population, I think there' research that says boys are more likely to be outliers, ie a few at the top end and a few at the bottom end of the spectrum.
But intelligence is a tricky thing to measure and is a product of a half understood mishmash of factors.

hmmm pink is a virus....I like it!

Girls get better exam results than boys. So why is it so bad to say they are more intelligent? Exam results are assessed anonymously. No-one would deny that boys are generally physically stronger. Is this sexism? Its an interesting but difficult point to debate.

Brandy from what I have observed, I wonder if it is more about aggression and being part of a gang that results in more power and higher earnings.

There are of course many things that will affect intelligence and test performance more than gender. But the way it is interpreted is very interesting. Ie - "its just because they sit and listen." No, its because they have learned and understood the concepts, and applied them in the exam.

Girl's achievements seem to get minimised. "oh, its just because.."

In the workplace, it is much harder to measure performance effectively.

If women's achievements are undervalued in the same way, that could explain how we end up with a pay gap of 22k average pay for women and 28k average pay for men.

chicken I am dont believe it follows that because girls do better in exams they are more intelligent.

Just as I would not assume that just because more girls wear pink, more girls prefer pink.

Exams measure if students have learned and understood the concepts, and applied them in the exam.

I would just like to add my vote for 'Delusions of Gender-cordelia fine'